How the new drug works:

Five things to know about advanced prostate cancer and EPI-506

1 Prostate cancer tumour cells are driven by androgens (male hormones like testosterone). Although hormone suppression therapy is often used against prostate cancer to cause cancer cell death, resistant cells may remain and grow again within a few years. Some men become resistant to hormone withdrawal more quickly than others.

2 Current hormone therapies target what is called the C-terminus of androgen receptors, the region where androgen binds. But the C-terminus can be bypassed (by cancer cells) to cause resistance to all known hormone suppression therapies.

3 The new drug targets the opposite end — the engine of the androgen receptor called the N-terminus — which is what is called a disordered region responsible for driving prostate cancer growth.

4 This drug reportedly blocks the protein interactions that are required for cancer to keep growing.

5 Pre-clinical research has shown that when EPI-506 is bound to the androgen receptor, it cannot turn on the genes that are involved in the proliferation of prostate cancer cells.